Q of the Week : How much screen time do your kids get?

Fixated on cartoons during vacation …

I’m sure you’ve been asked this question before, but I’d still love to know.  How much screen time (tv/video/games/computer/etc.) do your kids get a day or week?  My boys just finished watching a Tom/Jerry marathon thanks to a playdate-gone-long, and their insanity at the end of it all gets me every time. 

I’m generally on the minimalist end of things, having been raised with no TV whatsoever, and I find myself preferring to keep it that way.  I certainly use it to entertain at times, and as a reward, but free screen time is generally limited to 1/2 hour a day on weekends.  I do use videos for education, especially now that I’m homeschooling, but prefer to keep that to a couple days a week for 45 minutes or so.  When we’re away from home the rules are a lot more relaxed.  That probably explains the stares of the three in the photo, and their unwillingness to do anything else while watching! 

My own screen time?  Much more than theirs when it comes to blog wandering, and I’m toying with the idea of keeping my limit to 30 minutes a day unless it’s directly related to work.  I truly hate how much time I waste online, and as I try to keep up on Douglas’ book reading that may become easier to drop than I think!

So how’s screen time in your household? 

Comments

[Heather Cabot]

I struggle with this myself. I limit ALL screen time to less than an hour per day for my preschoolers. On weekends when the weather is bad, they sometimes watch a Disney movie as a special treat. They know it is a privilege and that they can watch at the end of the day when I am fixing dinner. We have certain PBS or Disney shows that I DVR for them and we discuss which ones they want if there is something new they want to see. What I find most troubling is that I literally have to pause the show to talk to them. They are utterly absorbed when the tube is on. I also find the computer and my iPhone are a major draw for them. I consider all of it screen time. A couple of years ago, I was privileged to interview some folks from Common Sense Media (commonsensemedia.org) who said that screen time doesn't really have much value until kids can read and even then, it should be limited. I was told, at the pre-reading stage, kids are served much more by the social interaction, creativity and problem solving skills etc. associated with imaginary play. That's what I remind myself when they start asking (whine) --- Can't we watch just ONE more??

[debbie]

My kids watch tons of t.v. and it is another thing I refuse to set rules around. I feel no guilt about it, there is too much rule setting and guilt inflicting in motherhood. Here's to joyfully mothering!

[Susan]

Screen time is a hard subject to keep in check. I can tell you that the research is there to prove that how much and what our kids are watching and is available to them to view IS affecting them negatively. You can see it all around you, so by limiting this just as you would not allow your child to drink 12 cans of coke a day is the right thing to do. Children need to have help understanding how to make choices, budget time and this concept of having a certain amount of a "privilege" for them to use is a great way to incorporate that. I have always limited screen time (TV, Videos, computer, IPOD) and as the kids get older, 12 yrs and up we start loosening the parent input to see how they do. If they can make good choices, then they are free to do so without my input, but if I see screen time starts monopolizing their time - I get the control back!

[paula]

i can only speak about how my husband and I were raised, me with no tv (and movies being a huge treat that i was glued to if i got to watch one somewhere) and him growing up in a house where the tv was basically always on.

we both agree that we don't like watching tv all the time, although we watch movies often (3 or more a week) and we watch maybe an hour of tv per day right now, since we have a tv.

the thing I've found is that i can't focus if the tv is on, and even if the radio is on it's hard for me to think unless i'm doing something pretty mindless. it's hard for him to understand that i'll get really irritable if he has the radio on and i'm trying to figure things out or do a complicated task.

so the upshot is that we have tension over him liking a soundtrack in the background constantly, and i prefer silence a lot of the time, even though i really like his musical choices.